Mighty Tall in the beginning.

This tale begins one summer evening when the usual suspects were playing a friendly game of volleyball. The action was moderately fast and symbolically furious; about what you would expect from a bunch of over-aged jocks. As a second game was about to begin, a long shadow was cast upon the court. A stranger had ducked in through the gym doors was lumbering towards the court. When he was court-side he stopped and asked, “Can I play?”

Ever ready with a quick return, Mike Malmon-Berg quipped, “I don’t know, can you?”

To which the stranger replied mysteriously, “Why, I invented the game,” and grinned a huge toothy grin that set everyone at ease, including the ever doubtful Tea Meulia.

On the court, the tall stranger was a force of medieval physics, raining down spikes from his towering height onto hapless opponents who scattered like so many peasants. He played the whole game superbly, covering the court as well as a teenage gymnast during her floor exercise.

About the time that Tea’s stomach itself became a medieval force along the lines of Henry the Eighth, the games ended and everyone joined together for the post-game banter. Midpoint through the post-game dining arrangements, someone noted that the tall stranger was gone.

“Where’d he go?!”
“Who was that guy?”
“He was amazing!”

“Think he’ll come back?”
“Sure hope so, but what was his name?”
“I don’t know but he was sure mighty tall!”

“Yeah! Mighty Tall!”

and thus began the first legend of Mighty Tall. A tall player of unsurpassed ability and height.

Mighty Tall returned for many games after that but always seemed to disappear before the post game banter ended. This only added to his legend; the shy athlete who was anything but shy on the court. Mighty Tall was well loved and his future seemed bright.

But come Fall things took a darker turn. Mighty Tall showed up in early October with strange tattoos on his arm. They seemed to be arcane symbols but he brushed them off as “his favorite economics equations”. The Chair of the Economics department seemed doubtful but thought they might be “Marxist fantasies”. However, there were soon other, darker changes.

Mighty Tall began to play like a man possessed. No longer content to simply hit the balls that came his way, he lunged at every ball on the court. Danger filled the court as the prospect of colliding with Mighty Tall started to worry the minds of all players, especially those whose only health coverage was that offered by the College. Play grew tentative and the banter less spirited. And Mighty Tall, his eyes glowing with a faint red light, seemed to be less charming than when he first appeared. In fact, all of his jokes now fell flat laying helplessly on the floor like a pithed frog until someone changed the subject.

As October marched on additional signs appeared that something more foul than a mid-life crises was afoot. It seemed to culminate one night, about a week before Halloween, when Wayne and Diane turned on the court lights and found the floorboards littered with butchered volleyballs. Each ball had scrawled across it a red smiley face. They knew this dark event must be shared with the others lest something more sinister occur.

To be continued next week.............................................................................................................................................................